Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Zombie Guts Recipe

I use the basic dough from this Sun Dried Tomato Focaccia recipe for everything.  It's a tasty focaccia as written. It's also good with herbs tossed in the dough or spread with pesto before covering in cheese.  I use it as a pizza dough, deep dish in a pan, hand tossed or rolled thin. I use it monkey bread style either with cinnamon and sugar or garlic salt and parmesan.  (See recipe variations at the end.) And I use it to make cinnamon rolls.  On Christmas morning cinnamon rolls look like cinnamon rolls, but around Halloween they look like intestines. 


Before we get started I would like to say that I would never ever tell you to eat raw dough, in fact I would say don't eat raw dough.  Because it clearly states on the bread flour bag in bold capital letters "DO NOT EAT RAW BREAD DOUGH" and it would be reckless insanity to go against boldface warnings.  Now that I've covered that, my grandmother would make fresh bread and cinnamon rolls every Saturday morning and I would beg her for raw dough.  She would give me a look, like something was fundamentally wrong with me, because no one in their right mind would eat raw bread dough. She'd sigh and shake her head, like it was against her better judgment, but she always gave me a little dough ball.  So every time I make dough, the family gets a bit of raw dough and it's delicious and no one has even died from it. 


Zombie Guts

Dough:
1 cup water
3 cups bread flour
2 tablespoons dry milk powder
3 1/2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter at room temp
2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Coating:
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup fine white sugar*
2-4 tablespoons ground cinnamon**

Glaze:
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk or cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly butter two 8 inch round pans.

Place water, flour, powdered milk, sugar, salt, butter and yeast into bread machine in the order suggested by the manufacturer ***. Set to Dough cycle, and start the machine. Dough will be 1/2 pound.

When the bread machine has finished the Dough cycle, take the dough out. Knead for 1 minute by hand. Place in an oiled bowl, and turn a few times to coat the surface of the dough. Cover with a damp cloth, and let rise for 15 minutes in a warm place. (An easy way to check if the dough has finished rising is to poke it with your figure, if the dent stays it's good to go.)

Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a medium sized bowl and set aside. 
Roll the dough out into a 12x18 inch rectangle. Use a pizza cutter to cut it into 16 strips lengthwise.  Dip the strips one at a time first in the butter, then in the sugar mixture to coat.  Randomly place 8 strips in each pan. You want them to squiggle all over the place, but at the same time try to make sure the dough is evenly distributed across the pan.  Let them rise again for 15 minutes. 


Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes or until slightly golden on top. 

In a small bowl slowly add powdered sugar to the melted butter. You should end up with a thick paste.  Add the vanilla and stir until smooth. Smooth out any lumps with the back of your spoon. Add 1 tablespoon of milk and again stir until smooth.  Slowly add more milk a little at a time until it's thin enough to drizzle.  Drizzle over the intestines while they are still warm.  This step is important so the glaze melts and soaks in.  This makes the intestines shiny. If you wait until they are cool, it just looks like frosting sitting on top, well because that's what it is. 



*A half and half mixture of dark brown and white sugar will make darker intestines. 

**The amount of cinnamon depends on type, quality and personal preference. Varieties labeled Saigon or Vietnamese have more kick than "regular". I like a lot of cinnamon, not only for flavor but color. 


***My manufacturer instructions are pretty simplistic, the following is what I do base on information I gleaned from somewhere a long time ago: 

Unless I'm opening a new jar of yeast, it's coming from the fridge so I measure out what I need and let it come to room temperature.  I microwave the water for 30 seconds, you want it warm, but not hot. Water goes in first.  I sprinkle the first two cups of flour so it sits on top of the water.  The last cup I dump in the center and make a well.  The yeast goes in the well.  Salt and sugar go in opposite corners.  By default I put the butter and milk powder in the remaining corners.  Start the dough cycle and check it after about 5 minutes.  My machine always has a bit of flour in the corners that needs a little nudge to get incorporated.  Let it go a few more minutes until everything is well mixed and look at dough again.  If it's too wet add one tablespoon of flour, too dry add one teaspoon of water. 


I'm still working on achieving bloodier intestines without compromising taste.  One time I added red food coloring to the glaze, but I hate the taste of food coloring, so I only added a little.  Pretty pink intestine are not scary or gross.  Ok they are scary and gross but for all the wrong reasons.  I made a clear glaze once but that bored my taste buds so I didn't use it.  I've seen intestines done with cherry pie filling, but then it becomes something else and is no longer a cinnamon roll. Maybe a light drizzle of a dark berry sauce or heated jam would look nice without overpowering? Or possibly a brown sugar butter glaze with a drop or two of red coloring.


Real quick, here are other things to do with this dough. 

Cinnamon rolls are almost the same as intestines except I use half the amount of butter, sugar and cinnamon.  After rolling out the 12x18 rectangle, spread on 1/4 cup of soft butter and then sprinkle with 1/2 cup sugar (I use a mix of brown and white) with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. Roll it up and cut it into 16 even slices, place 8 on each pan.  Let rise and bake same as the intestines.  This time let them cool prior to adding the glaze. 

When I use it for pizza either hand tossed or rolled I bake it at a higher temp of 425 F for 10 minutes.  Can't remember the time when using it pan style it's been too long. 

Remember Domino's Pizza Dots? These are similar, better if you ask me.  Usually when I make dots I make one pan of cinnamon ones and the other ones cheesy.  After the dough is done rising split it in half.  Set one half back in the bowl and cover it up so it doesn't dry out.  Keep dividing the remaining half until you have 32 pieces.  Melt 1/4 cup butter.  Mix 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon.  Dip each piece of dough first in the butter, then in the sugar mixture and place them in the pan.  For the cheesy dots grate or finely shred 1/2 cup of parmesan and mix with a 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt. Divide the other half of dough into 32 pieces.  Melt 1/4 cup butter.  Dip the dough first in the butter, then the cheese and place in the pan.  Bake them at 350 for 12-15 minutes or until done. Another variation on the cheese dots its to wrap the dough around a small chunk of mozzarella, make sure the edges are pinched shut and then dip in the butter and parmesan. 

Here is a label for Zombie Guts.  The font is A Lolita Scorned by Angeliq.

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